“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 1

Visitors

1041152

2020 Overmedication

The Foster Care System Failing Children and the US Taxpayer

It has been estimated that 70% of
the US prison population was once in foster care. Three in 10 of the nation's
homeless adults report foster care history. This points to an
obvious problem within our social service network. We must be failing these needy children. There
are inadequacies in supervision of the placement of these children, clear
indications of corruption within the system as well as neglect of the
children’s needs. Child placement agencies, foster care parents and residential treatment centers get paid a
daily sum for the care of a foster child. These allocated amounts are based on
the Federal entitlement system IV-e and are based on the level of care the
child needs. The more difficult the child is to care for the higher the daily
payment for care. Thus it is in the interest of the state agencies, social
service workers, foster parents, and therapeutic clinicians to make the child
appear on paper to need the highest level of care possible. Many foster
children are labeled with more than one psychological diagnosis in order to
upgrade their status to a higher level. Foster care daily rates run from $17
per day to $1,000 per day. A child diagnosed with a mental disorder and placed
on psychiatric drugs is worth more than a child without problems. Let us hear
first hand from some of these foster children who were interviewed at a Foster Care
Alumni meeting and asked about their experiences with child protective services
while still wards of the state.

Financial and Societal Costs of Drugging Foster Children

Foster Care in the State of Texas

Jim Gottstein - Foster Children

Psychiatric Drugging of Foster Children

Children in foster care are a very vulnerable population having been removed from abusive or neglectful homes. These children are experiencing childhood trauma, grief at loss of their biological family, their home community and often having experienced severe abuse – physical, psychological, emotional and sexual. These are children who often have experienced years of trauma leaving them with complex post traumatic stress. Thus they are prone to show the symptoms of PTSD¸- which is often misunderstood and therefore is often treated as other mental health conditions instead.

PTSD is best handled by cognitive behavioral therapy – this is proven to be effective for victims of sexual assault and also combat trauma. These children have come from a home environment which is like a combat zone – domestic violence, drug dealers, drive by shooting, child sexual abuse by relatives, abusive punishments, parents with mental illness who act irrationally and arbitrarily, and other traumatic events. But rather than getting psychological care these traumatized children need these vulnerable children are instead refused the necessary psychological therapy and are instead sent to a psychiatrist who then in sometimes less than 15 minutes prescribes for them mind altering and sometimes life endangering drugs.

Thousands of foster children are routinely prescribed doses of psychotropic drugs that are higher than the maximum levels cited in guidelines based on FDA approved labels. This increases the potential for adverse side effects and does not typically increase the efficacy of the drugs to any appreciable extent. Even children as young as one year old were prescribed psychiatric drugs even though there were no mental health conditions in infants which would warrant their use. This certainly could result in serious adverse effects including metabolic and cardiovascular problems

The side effects of these drugs include suicidal thoughts, loss of coordination, hallucinations, kidney, thyroid, liver and pancreas damage, polycystic ovaries, weight gain, diabetes, tremors, potentially fatal neuroleptic malignant syndrome, rigidity, tardive dyskinesia, depression, agitation, sleeplessness or downiness, nightmares, blurred vision, decreased appetite, tics, and psychosis. When the children show these symptoms they are often given higher doses of the drugs or even additional drugs, rather than being given lower dosages or taken off these medications. So a spiral occurs of increasing dosages of more powerful drugs leading to great symptoms and decreasing function of the child. When the child becomes unmanageable, they are placed in a residential treatment facility at $700 or more a day for weeks sometimes much longer. If the psychiatrist wants to change their medication and get them “habituated” on a new medication the child might be hospitalized for half a year or more. This all happens at the US taxpayers’ expense.

In an effort to expand the market for psychiatric drugs, pharmaceutical companies capitalized on the use of foster children to test their products on this vulnerable population. These children were not given the right to informed consent, they were wards of the court in a judicial system that is overworked and understaffed and where even CASA volunteers have little time to carefully review FDA information or scientific literature about the safety or effectiveness of prescribed medications. The legal surrogate decision makers for the child are not medically trained and often accept blindly the advice of the treating psychiatrist. No information about the long term consequences of the use of these medications in children is given to these decision makers so crisis decision making is the norm with the pills looking like the perfect quick fix. In addition the pharmaceutical industry has for decades controlled the release of negative information about their products by controlling all the publicity of research findings (funded by the industry), using an aggressive legal campaign to shut down any malpractice law suit¸ out of court settlements with gag orders for silence and suppressing court documents from discovery by having them sealed by the judge.

Through aggressive marketing to medical professionals, teachers, CASA volunteers, welfare case managers, and guardians, the pharmaceutical companies have now pushed the treatment of children for such mental diseases as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia, often diagnosing them for these problems so as to use psychiatric medications “off label”. The Teen Screen program which pushed psychiatric drugs on school children is an example of this direct marketing by pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry has placed industry representatives on major governmental panels and commissions order to influence policy to facilitate passing legislation that would approve the Medicaid payment of psychiatric medications for “off label” uses. But these drugs are not without risk, there are serious side-effects, including irreversible movement disorders, seizures, and increased risk of diabetes.

The prescription of these drugs is oftentimes very questionable and inappropriate prescribing of youth in state custody has lead to increased costs to the US taxpayer over the lifetime of the child. These children, who are often medicated with up to 5 drugs at the same time, have cognitive impairment, as well as physical dependency on the drugs. When they try to stop the medications they face severe withdrawal symptoms for up to 7 months and these symptoms can be misunderstood and the child instead re-drugged at high dosages. No study has been done to see if these foster children who were highly medicated were able to go on to productive independent lives after leaving foster care. Many have been in and out of residential treatment, leading to disruption in their schooling. In addition these drugs change the child’s ability to think, reason, and also dull emotional awareness and response. This makes it difficult to learn and to relate to peers and their foster/adoptive family.

When they age out of the foster care system, they find themselves thrown out into a world that labels them as mental misfits, treats them with disrespect and forces them into being repeat users of the psychiatric industry/medical complex. Many end up in prison and then are force drugged by court order in prison and when they are released court ordered medicated for life. The costs of the repeat hospitalizations – at $700 -$1,000 a day along with the cost of medications at tens of thousands of dollars a year, is a cost borne by the US taxpayer until the former foster child’s death. It is almost impossible to be taken off these medications once the child has taken them for years.

Jesse Jackson: "I am - Somebody. I
may be poor, but I am - Somebody! I may be on welfare, but I am - Somebody! I
may be uneducated, but I am - Somebody! I must be, I’m God’s child. I must be
respected and protected. I am black and I am beautiful! I am - Somebody! Soul
Power!" Address to Operation Breadbasket rally, 1966.

Foster Care Statistics

· 80% of the US prison inmate population was in the foster
care system (US Dept. of Justice, 2005)

· 70% of California's inmates have been in the foster care
system (Sacramento Bee article by John Burton [chairman of the CA Democratic
Party and chairs the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes)

· Children are 11 times more likely to be abused in State
care that they are in their own homes. (National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect [NCCAN])

· 90% increase of children and youth in the US foster care
system since 1987. (Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family
Support *CASEY FOUNDATION*)

· 3 out of 10 of the nations homeless are former foster
children. (Casey Foundation*)

· Children in foster care are 3 to 6 times more likely to
have emotional, behavioral, and developmental problems including:

· Conduct disorders

· Depression

· Difficulties in school

· Impaired social relationships

(Casey Foundation*)

· Approximately 30% of foster children have marked or severe
emotional problems. (Casey Foundation*)

· Children and youth in foster care tend to have limited
education and job skills and perform poorly in school compared to children NOT
in care. (Casey Foundation*)

· Children in foster care lag behind their education by at
LEAST one year and have lower educational attainment than the general
population. (Casey Foundation*)

· Children in foster care are 5.25 times more like to die as
a result of abuse than children in the general population. (CPS Watch Inc.)

· 2.1 % of ALL CHILD FATALITIES took place in foster care.

**Since "state care is supposed to be a 'safe-haven',
the number of fatalities should have been less than the child fatalities of the
general population (less than 0.4%). However, child fatalities that occurred
while in foster care were 5.25 times greater than that amount." (CPS Watch
Inc.)

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

By DUFF WILSON

[New York Times]
December 11, 2009

New
federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by
Medicaid are given powerful
antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents
have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the
drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data
shows.

Those
findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to
a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful
psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed
the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be
handled much differently for middle-class children?

The
questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as
that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects,
causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong physical
problems.

On
Tuesday, a pediatric advisory committee to the
Food and Drug Administration met to
discuss the health risks for all children who take antipsychotics. The panel
will consider recommending new label warnings for the drugs, which are now used
by an estimated 300,000 people under age 18 in this country, counting both
Medicaid patients and those with private insurance.

Meanwhile, a group of Medicaid medical directors from 16 states, under a project
they call Too Many, Too Much, Too Young, has been experimenting with ways to
reduce
prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs
among Medicaid children.

They
plan to publish a report early next year.

The
Rutgers-Columbia study will also be published early next year, in the
peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs. But the findings have already been posted
on the Web, setting off discussion among experts who treat and study
troubled young people.

Some
experts say they are stunned by the disparity in prescribing patterns. But
others say it reinforces previous indications, and their own experience, that
children with diagnoses of mental or emotional problems in low-income families
are more likely to be given drugs than receive family counseling or
psychotherapy.

Part
of the reason is insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for
counseling and therapy than private insurers do. Part of it may have to do with
the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending
counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available.

“It’s
easier for patients, and it’s easier for docs,” said Dr. Derek H. Suite, a
psychiatrist in the Bronx whose pediatric cases include children and adolescents
covered by Medicaid and who sometimes prescribes antipsychotics. “But the
question is, ‘What are you prescribing it for?’ That’s where it gets a little
fuzzy.”

Too
often, Dr. Suite said, he sees young Medicaid patients to whom other doctors
have given antipsychotics that the patients do not seem to need. Recently, for
example, he met with a 15-year-old girl. She had stopped taking the
antipsychotic medication that had been prescribed for her after a single
examination, paid for by Medicaid, at a clinic where she received a diagnosis of
bipolar disorder.

Why
did she stop? Dr. Suite asked. “I can control my moods,” the girl said softly.

After
evaluating her, Dr. Suite decided she was right. The girl had arguments with her
mother and stepfather and some
insomnia. But she was a good student and
certainly not bipolar, in Dr. Suite’s opinion.

“Normal teenager,” Dr. Suite said, nodding. “No scrips for you.”

Because there can be long waits to see the
psychiatrists accepting Medicaid, it is
often a pediatrician or
family doctor who prescribes an
antipsychotic to a Medicaid patient — whether because the parent wants it or the
doctor believes there are few other options.

Some
experts even say Medicaid may provide better care for children than many covered
by private insurance because the drugs — which can cost $400 a month — are
provided free to patients, and families do not have to worry about the
co-payments and other insurance restrictions.

“Maybe
Medicaid kids are getting better treatment,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a child
psychiatrist and professor at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. “If it helps
keep them in school, maybe it’s not so bad.”

In any
case, as Congress works on health care legislation that could expand the
nation’s Medicaid rolls by 15 million people — a 43 percent increase — the scope
of the antipsychotics problem, and the expense, could grow in coming years.

Even
though the drugs are typically cheaper than long-term therapy, they are the
single biggest drug expenditure for Medicaid, costing the program $7.9 billion
in 2006, the most recent year for which the data is available.

The
Rutgers-Columbia research, based on millions of Medicaid and private insurance
claims, is the most extensive analysis of its type yet on children’s
antipsychotic drug use. It examined records for children in seven big states —
including New York, Texas and California — selected to be representative of the
nation’s Medicaid population, for the years 2001 and 2004.

The
data indicated that more than 4 percent of patients ages 6 to 17 in Medicaid
fee-for-service programs received antipsychotic drugs, compared with less than 1
percent of privately insured children and adolescents. More recent data through
2007 indicates that the disparity has remained, said Stephen Crystal, a Rutgers
professor who led the study. Experts generally agree that some characteristics
of the Medicaid population may contribute to psychological problems or
psychiatric disorders. They include the stresses of poverty, single-parent
homes, poorer schools, lack of access to preventive care and the fact that the
Medicaid rolls include many adults who are themselves mentally ill.

As a
result, studies have found that children in low-income families may have a
higher rate of
mental health problems — perhaps two to
one — compared with children in better-off families. But that still does not
explain the four-to-one disparity in prescribing antipsychotics.

Professor Crystal, who is the director of the Center for Pharmacotherapy at
Rutgers, says his team’s data also indicates that poorer children are more
likely to receive antipsychotics for less serious conditions than would
typically prompt a prescription for a middle-class child.

But
Professor Crystal said he did not have clear evidence to form an opinion on
whether or not children on Medicaid were being overtreated.

“Medicaid kids are subject to a lot of stresses that lead to behavior issues
which can be hard to distinguish from more serious psychiatric conditions,” he
said. “It’s very hard to pin down.”

And
yet Dr. Mark Olfson, a
psychiatry professor at Columbia and a
co-author of the study, said at least one thing was clear: “A lot of these kids
are not getting other mental health services.”

The
F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat
schizophrenia,
autism and bipolar disorder. But they
are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions,
including
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders —
especially when the children are covered by Medicaid, the new study shows.

Although doctors may legally prescribe the drugs for these “off label” uses,
there have been no long-term studies of their effects when used for such
conditions.

The
Rutgers-Columbia study found that Medicaid children were more likely than those
with private insurance to be given the drugs for off-label uses like A.D.H.D.
and conduct disorders. The privately insured children, in turn, were more likely
than their Medicaid counterparts to receive the drugs for F.D.A.-approved uses
like bipolar disorder.

Even
if parents enrolled in Medicaid may be reluctant to put their children on drugs,
some come to rely on them as the only thing that helps.

“They say it’s
impossible to stop now,” Evelyn Torres, 48, of the Bronx, said of her son’s use
of antipsychotics since he received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 3.
Seven years later, the boy is now also afflicted with weight and heart problems.
But Ms. Torres credits Medicaid for making the boy’s mental and physical
conditions manageable. “They’re helping with everything,” she said.

Photo -
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times -
Dr. Derek
H. Suite, a psychiatrist in the Bronx, says he sees many children on
antipsychotic drugs who do not need them.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
= = = = = = =

A front page article in The New York Times raises the
long-overdue alarms about the forced drugging of American children -- in
particular poor children who are condemned to ingest toxic neuroleptics (a.k.a.
'atypical antipsychotics’) at a rate four times higher than children whose
parents have private insurance. These drugs qualify under the definition of
poison.

Wikepedia definition of poison: "In the context of biology, poisons are
substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical
reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is
absorbed by an organism."

These drugs' toxic debilitating effects are clinically measurable and
demonstrable in children's impaired biological functions (cardiovascular,
hormonal, metabolic, gastrointestinal) and damaged organs (liver, heart, and
brain) not to speak of their adverse effects on children's mental and
psychological well-being.

The only unknown factor is how long it will take for these drugs' toxic effects
to cause a particular child severe, irreversible damage.

"Some experts say they are stunned by the disparity in prescribing patterns. But
others say it reinforces previous indications, and their own experience, that
children with diagnoses of mental or emotional problems in low-income families
are more likely to be given drugs than receive family counseling or
psychotherapy."

Of note, as the Times reports, "Part of the reason is insurance reimbursements,
as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private
insurers do."

This points to the (perhaps) unintended, but likely catastrophic consequences of
a "public insurance option"--one that fails to rein in irresponsible clinicians
who have financial ties to drug manufacturers. The FDA's failure to restrict
the use of toxic, harm producing prescription drugs whose clinical efficacy is a
matter of heated debate--coupled with the agency's recent irresponsible approval
of these drugs for use in teens--without evidence of long-term safety
usage--demonstrates a colossal disregard for America's vulnerable children who
are relegated as sacrificial lambs.

The Times quotes one of the leading American child psychiatrists who suggests
that children on Medicaid who are being prescribed poison at quadruple the rate
that other American children are, "are getting better treatment."

"Maybe Medicaid kids are getting better treatment," said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson,
a child psychiatrist and professor at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. "If it
helps keep them in school, maybe it's not so bad."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may
contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available
for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy,
scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that
this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for
in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is
distributed without profit.

"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself." Confucius

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who
points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but
who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who
at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so
that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore
Roosevelt- Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic",
delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

Medical Whistleblower Commitment to Non-Violence

Medical Whistleblower has a commitment to improving the protection of all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as defined in, among others, the following regional and international legal instruments:

• UN legal instruments pertaining to human rights, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the international covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social and cultural rights; the conventions providing for monitoring mechanisms (torture, racial discrimination, discrimination against women, the rights of the child, rights of migrant workers and their families); and the conventions and standards of the International Labor Organization;

• Special procedures and non-treaty mechanisms of the United Nations;

• The Declaration on Human Rights Defenders;

• The UN resolution establishing the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on human rights defenders;

• The United Nations guidelines on human rights defenders;

In addition, Medical Whistleblower upholds the principle of a code of ethical and moral conduct that all means used by Medical Whistleblower will not include violence - We exclude the use of violence to advance political aims. We work with and in collaboration with existing governmental structures and systems but put pressure on governments in a non-violent manner to achieve human rights protections and goals.

"The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience."

“When we call anything a person’s right, we mean that he has a
valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of it, either by the
force of law, or by that of education and opinion”

John Stuart Mill

"The adversarial system of justice is by nature unfair and unjust. It favours the strongover the weak. It accentuates social and cultural differences, favouring the rich whoare able to engage and pay for the services of one or more layers."

Justice MinisterMadame Guigou, 1999

“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.”
―Martin Luther

Protect Medical Whistleblowers

“The most powerful individual in the state will be cautious of committing any flagrant invasion of another’s right, when he knows that the fact of his oppression must be examined and decided by twelve indifferent men.”

Registration Survey

“I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something
that I can do.”
― Edward Everett Hale

Film on Residential Child Abuse

Over the GW - Available on DVD

Make Torture of US Citizens on US Soil illegal

IF YOU NEED HELP

Vietnam
Veterans of America, Crisis Phone Number. Special
Notice: If you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call
this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255 available 24/7, and tell them you are a
veteran. All calls are confidential. http://www.vva.org/.

Veterans’
Crisis Intervention Hotline: 1-888-899-9377.
A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network
to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult
issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of
veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.

Safe Harborincludes links to find medical doctors (by zip code) who can assist with helping people safely get off of psychiatric drugs and medical personnel who will treat people without the use of psychiatric drugs.